Dearly Departed

I had a first-time-in-my-life adventure yesterday, which, at my age, is quite an accomplishment.

That is, I went to the dentist to have a molar extracted.

Beforehand, I looked on the internet to see what was involved. I saw that it could get messy if the tooth and its roots put up a fight.

As often happens before any surgical procedure, or before a dangerous ride at the fun fair, I was given a paper to sign to show that I was aware of all the bad possibilities. There were about five or six such bad possibilities, but the only one I remember—and which caused me to cross-examine the professionals present in the room—was the possibility of ending up with a temporarily OR PERMANENTLY numb lip.

PERMANENTLY?!

They don’t dare say, “Don’t worry, it won’t happen to you,” because that would somehow void your consent to the risk of the disfigurement in question.

They showed me on a screen the X-ray of my upper jaw, and we discussed which tooth was to be removed.

“Number two molar,” they said.

“No,” I cried. “It’s not the second one, it’s the first one!”

They said—and how was I to argue?—that the end molar is number two, and the second one in is number one.

Now I was nervous, so I said to the dentist, “I am a retired lawyer, and I am planning my lawsuit against you if you extract the wrong tooth or if this doesn’t turn out.”

Heh heh.

Now the dentist and his assistant took up their positions. They gave me sunglasses to put on. I asked them to turn on the TV on the ceiling, but it was out of order, so I concentrated on the ceiling tiles.

They put on their facemasks and safety glasses, and the dentist put on his alien-costume ocular devices—you know, the magnifying glasses fastened to a telescope, etc.—and advanced towards my mouth.

The assistant reassuringly tapped my shoulder while HE, the dentist, cinched me into the chair and installed two giant C-clamps on the molar to be wrenched out. He then took out a brace and bit, drilled a giant screw into the side of the molar, braced his foot against the door frame, yelled, “Banzai!” and aggressively tore my poor, innocent, beloved old tooth from my upper jaw.

Well, no. That’s not what happened.

Although, yes, the assistant reassuringly tapped my shoulder while the dentist made everything numb with a couple of needles—“Just a pinch, not really pain,” they said.

He walked away for a few minutes to allow my mouth to turn into half a mouth.

Back he came, tapped the tooth to see that the freezing had worked, and then put what felt like a small pin into the tooth. He rocked it a bit, he twisted it a bit, and out came the molar.

He held it up to show me, and there it was, roots and all.

He pulled his mask down and said, “No lawsuit.”

While I was waiting for the dentist’s amoxicillin prescription to be filled on my way home, I strolled through the grocery store looking for the recommended “soft” food.

I settled on two containers of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. I chose dulce de leche and coffee after careful consideration.

Might as well enjoy the situation.

This morning I learned exactly how much that molar had actually weighed.

You will be as surprised as I was to learn that the molar weighed just under two pounds!

That’s how much my weight was down from one day to the next, in spite of eating all that ice cream.

Next time I can’t get into my jeans, I will go straight to the dentist and get another molar out.